


come a nice man, says everything's fine

by cryptidcountry



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, The Adventure Zone: Amnesty, a lot of the other characters are mentioned throughout, also slight minerva/duck for the sake of...u guessed it...character exploration, so it's all over the timeline of the campaign for the sake of character exploration, this is non-linear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-23 22:34:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20897216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cryptidcountry/pseuds/cryptidcountry
Summary: Duck Newton is a kind man, but he is also a good man.(a non-linear duck newton character study)





	come a nice man, says everything's fine

**Author's Note:**

> this is basically just a bunch of duck newton headcanons rolled up into one fic and called a character study.....i really love this man and hope that my perception of him does justice to the actual character!
> 
> title from: black waters by son lux

Duck Newton is a kind man, but he is also a nice man, and so he does not need reason to smile.

He smiles at people on the street— not strangers because there are no strangers in Kepler if you’ve lived there your whole life— because he was raised to use and receive the gesture as a polite reflex. He smiles at park-goers with a little tip of his hat, genuine in his wishes that they have a nice visit and inquiries on if they need any help getting around. He smiles at Juno when they cross paths, her teasing jabs as familiar to his work routine as the names of flora he can list at the drop of a dime when confronted by elementary school field trips.

He shares tired smiles with Mama over coffee in the morning and conspiratorial smiles with Leo over maps of Kepler in the evening and awkward smiles with Agent Stern in the parking lot of the Lodge.

He smiles somewhat clumsily at Indrid, always imitated back to him not unkindly by someone already expecting them, because he was raised with the Southern need to reassure, to not let the company of others appear as a nuisance to him. Not that Indrid was ever really a nuisance. And so, he smiles at him to reinforce that. Indrid always grins knowingly in return.

He smiles at Moira and Barclay and Dani and Dr. Harris Bonkers, PhD. It ain’t no thing for Duck Newton to share that gesture with others, in whatever context it may be called for, because he was raised with it stitched into the jerk of his knee.

But there are other smiles— ones that take longer to become instinct, ones that must be mutually earned.

They go like this: he smiles at Ned when he says something funny and at Aubrey when she says something clever, but as time with them passes, he finds himself smiling when they do nothing more than walk into the room. He smiles at them because he loves them.

Duck Newton loves quietly and fiercely, as he does many things.

The more Minerva hangs around, _really _hangs around, corporeal and able to be in one place for longer than three minutes and all, the less the smiles they share are just shows of familiar instinct born out of years of greeting one another with formal respect. He finds that more often, especially once things begin to settle down in Kepler, he is giving Minerva smiles that are accompanied by warm cheeks and stuttering not born out of lying. That same deep respect still sits on his chest like the most welcome weight, but it has now begun digging deeper and working its way into the organ underneath.

When Minerva walks into the living room one morning and Duck is already smiling at her before they even make eye contact, he thinks distantly, quietly surprised to himself, the following three things in exact order: _oh. well. shit. _

\---

Duck’s work is his life.

Mama’s work is her life, too, and so is Barclay’s— and so does Aubrey’s become. Magic has always been her life, quite literally, but using it to fight and protect and grow is everything to her.

But Duck’s work is his life in a way unlike any of the rest of them. He never turns it off. He could, technically. He just never would.

Aubrey saved her number in Duck’s phone herself: _“the lady flame”_ complete with a fire emoji and sparkle emoji alongside. He had sighed upon seeing it once she handed the phone back, but the sigh turned into that rough huffed breath of suppressed laughter when he glanced up and saw her practically vibrating with smug pleasure.

She’s texted him countless times. He’s usually slow to reply, but he always does, and their conversations become less and less business-oriented. As time goes on, she begins calls him.

When Aubrey calls, he answers, “Go for Duck,” every single time, no matter how often they talk. She knows that the contact information is there to light up his screen, she knows he knows it’s her. But, still.

She calls Duck often. Much more commonly after. After. After Ned.

They live together, they do missions together. They spend almost all their time together, both because their work requires it but also just because they like to. But he also has shifts at the forest he would die before neglecting, and this is time Aubrey loves to spend with Dani.

One night, when Dani was already fast asleep curled against Aubrey’s side on the living room couch, Aubrey thought about Ned.

She had slid out from under Dani’s arms as carefully as she could and locked herself in the bathroom. She doesn’t like to talk to Dani about Ned, can’t stomach watching the way her face twists up with guilt and pain that she doesn’t deserve to have to carry around.

She had texted Duck. She never had that late at night before.

**can i call you? are you free? **

**Yeah, Aubrey. Go ahead. **

He had responded more quickly than usual. And still, when she calls not thirty seconds later, even though he’s expecting her on the line and even though he must know she’s calling for personal reasons, he picks up with a “Go for Duck.”

When they were first getting to know each other, Aubrey had been worried his close connection to his work would prevent them from getting closer as people— that she would fall into his colleague category and never make it into his friend one.

But when she says_ “Duck”_ into the phone that night, voice already cracking on even so short a word, he’s immediately telling her he’s going to pack up and head out, assuring her he’ll be home in no time. He keeps talking to her, recounting stories of hikers and delinquents and the ways the trees are starting to turn in color. She can hear him shuffling papers and moving about on the other end of the line and knows how busy he must be because he always is, how this must have disrupted the flow of one of his uncommon graveyard shifts— but he never stops talking to her.

She hasn’t been worried about being his friend in a long time.

\---

For a while, Aubrey thought Duck always sounded at least a little sad whenever he spoke.

His “Hey, Aubrey” and “Hey, Mama” in the mornings when they would all meet up the perfect example of how his cadence was oftentimes heavy and slow, sloping downwards like a landslide taking its time. It worried her, thinking that her friend could be so inherently sad that he just spoke that way.

As time went on, she gathered that it wasn’t that he was sad. It’s just that Duck is at almost all times exhausted out of his mind. 

After Ned dies, she learns what Duck sounds like when he’s sad.

\--- 

Duck Newton is a kind man, a good man. The longer he spends in someone’s company, the more obvious it becomes that he has far more to him than his Southern-bred hospitality.

Duck Newton is a cat-person and talks to his when he works on his model boats.

He is almost unfathomably trustworthy.

He is unbelievable on a skateboard and is always happy to take Jake out to the parking lot of the Lodge and compare tricks when he has the time.

He is funny, wildly so, in ways that are never expected by newcomers but always well-received by those he’s known for a while. To this day, he can still feel the phantom pressure of Ned’s pats to his back, without fail right between the shoulder-blades whenever he made a particularly witty joke. When Aubrey touches him there to comfort him after the funeral, it makes them both cry.

He groans when he wakes up and groans when he lays down at night, groans every time Thacker offers him some gorp and anytime anyone who isn’t Minerva calls him “Wayne.”

He sighs more than he breathes. Everyone he’s ever come into contact with has gotten a Deep Duck Sigh at least once per conversation. He sighs to think, to laugh when he doesn’t want to laugh, to respond to things he doesn’t want to hear.

Duck Newton is a kind man, but he is also a good man, and anyone who ever spent so much as five minutes with him could tell you that without hesitation.

**Author's Note:**

> my first taz fic!!!!! pls let me know what u think! god i hope it wasn't too stilted n choppy this podcast means the world to me and duck newton if you're free on thursday PLEASE hit me up
> 
> u can find me on tumblr @wastelndbby if u want! :)


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